Thread by @DrEricDing

French counterintelligence authorities are investigating whether the Russian government was behind an attempt to pay high-profile health and science bloggers (up to $2500/video) to sow public doubts about the safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech #COVID19 vaccine.
wsj.com/articles/franc…

2) previous study:

“Whereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated antivaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord. Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

3) “Public Health Implications. Directly confronting vaccine skeptics enables bots to legitimize the vaccine debate. More research is needed to determine how best to combat bot-driven content.”

4) More reporting: “French & German YouTubers, bloggers and influencers have been offered money by a supposedly UK-based PR agency with apparent Russian connections to tell their followers the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is responsible for hundreds of deaths.
theguardian.com/media/2021/may…

5) “The influencers were told to publish links on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok to reports in Le Monde, on Reddit and on the Ethical Hacker website about a leaked report containing data that supposedly substantiates [a false] claim.”

6) “The article in Le Monde is about data reportedly stolen by Russian hackers from the European Medicines Agency and later published on the Dark Web. It contains no information on mortality rates. The pages on the other two sites have been deleted.

7) “The influencers were asked to tell their subscribers that “the mainstream media ignores this theme”, and to ask: “Why some governments actively purchasing Pfizer vaccine, which is dangerous to the health of the people?”

8) “The brief also included requests to “act like you have the passion and interest in this topic”, and to avoid using the words “advertising” or “sponsored” in posts or videos because “the material should be presented as your own independent view”.

9) “Screen shots of the emails were posted on Twitter by Léo Grasset, a popular French science YouTuber with nearly 1.2m subscribers. Grasset said the campaign had a “colossal budget” but that the agency refused to identify its client.”

https://twitter.com/dirtybiology/status/1396720943121248257

10) “Mirko Drotschman, a German YouTuber and podcaster with 1.5 million subscribers, also posted a screenshot of an email asking him to take part in an “information campaign” about “a significant number of deaths” after the Pfizer shot.”

https://twitter.com/MrWissen2Go/status/1394716050596450312

11) “Please send us statistics on the age of your subscribers … and how much it would cost,” the mail concluded. The French investigative website Fact&Furious posted a mail describing Fazze’s budget as “considerable” and the fee as “the rate you wish”.

12) “According to LinkedIn, Fazze’s management come from Moscow and have worked for an agency reportedly founded by a Russian entrepreneur.”

13) “French media have pointed to the similarities between Fazze’s message and the official Twitter account of Russia’s Sputnik V – a viral vector vaccine like AstraZeneca—which has repeatedly claimed “real world data” shows they are “safer and more efficient” than mRNA vaccines.

14) “An EU study last month accused Russian and Chinese media of “state-sponsored disinformation” aimed at sowing mistrust in western vaccines by sensationalising safety concerns…

15) …”making “unfounded links between shots and deaths in Europe”, and promoting Russian and Chinese vaccines as superior.” france24.com/en/live-news/2…